The design process aims at analyzing the application integration needs, designing the information architecture (IA), and creating comprehensive requirements for the development phase.
In this document:
The design process involves the product manager and solution architect roles. On completion of the design steps, they create documents required in the development process:
Sales model
Resource model
User scenarios
Information architecture
Wireframes of all UI screens
Leverage the effect of this document by complying with the following prerequisites:
Basic knowledge and skills in platform resource management, deployment, and provisioning of application services
Basic knowledge and skills in platform sales models and configuration of the platform products for sale
Basic knowledge of APS integration specifics
Will, as the product manager, starts with gathering a description of the cloud application that he is going to integrate with the OSS/BSS platform. Key points:
Which services and sub-services are you going to provide and sell?
Which services does the application provide per customer and per user?
Which configuration sets can the providers offer to parameterize resources acquired by customers?
Does the application need services from other applications? For example, domain registration or anti-virus.
Are there other applications your application can integrate with?
A sales model usually contains the following minimal set:
Services for sale - offers
Included resources and add-ons
Resource types and service templates
Service plans
Get more details about this step in the Sales Model document.
A resource model must be closely related with the sales model. The model design process is described in the APS Resource Model section.
The documents that help understand and build the application resource model:
A resource model diagram as demonstrated in the APS Resource Model document.
A detailed description of each service including properties and operations to be implemented.
A corrected sales model as demonstrated in the APS Resource Model document for various resource models and represented by:
A service template with application resources
A service plan with resource rates
Get more details about this step in the APS Resource Model document.
Will formulates design requirements for his colleague Roger, the solution architect of the project. The requirements are contained in the following documents designed at the previous step:
A description of the application services to be delivered to customers
A sales model presented by the service template and service plan with respective descriptions
A resource model with a description
The designed sales model and resource model allow Roger to proceed with the following steps:
Design activity |
Outcome |
---|---|
Identify customer personas that are consumers of the application services |
- List of a administrative personnel and service use employees
- Detailed description of each persona
|
Identify integration points of the application on the OSS/BSS platform |
Persona-based list of touchpoints with a brief description of the communication area where these touchpoints are used |
Design user scenarios |
Approved User scenarios, separately for each persona:
|
Design the information architecture |
Tables and diagrams presenting details of UI screens and APS types |
Design UI wireframes |
Approved UI wireframes with interaction calls of backend and frontend methods |
The platform must have a simplified customer team that will manage and consume application services as described in the Customer Personas document:
Samantha: the SOHO owner and simultaneously the administrative staff
Emily: the SOHO employee that is the typical consumer (service user) of an application resource
Get more details about this step in the Customer Personas document.
In the considered OSS/BSS platform, there is a predefined set of integration points that Roger can use in his project. Analyzing the sales model, resource model, and the list of available integration points, Roger defines the set of integration points his application needs to implement.
The User scenarios must be oriented towards the personas defined earlier. Roger gets familiar with the typical Customer Scenarios to develop user scenarios for his application. The scenarios must walk the respective users through the integration points defined at the previous step.
Get more details about this step in the Customer Scenarios document.
In this step, Roger compiles the data gathered and built at the previous steps in the format suitable for developers as described in the Information Architecture document. Preferably, it should be a set of tables and diagrams with detailed description of all APS types involved into development.
Get more details about this step in the Information Architecture document.
Roger analyzes scenarios and designs a wireframe for each step. Refer to the Frontend documentation and primarily to User Interface to get description of the controls Roger can use in the custom UI.
For more detailed descriptions, refer to:
Roger sends the following documents designed in this phase to Kevin, the project developer, who will start the development process.
List of selected integration points
User scenarios
Information architecture
Wireframes